﻿Vote green ﻿andy brown

For me the central question in this campaign remains a very simple one. What kind of society do we wish to live in?For decades we have lived through an era when the dominant ideology has been everyone needs to look out for themselves and the state shouldn't do much, if anything to help them. It is now becoming obvious to all, even Theresa May that there are some areas of life where that view is simply unsustainable. People who live in a community need to look out for each other, spread the risks and also spread the rewards to a reasonable degree.Take housing for example. For many years after the war governments from all sides of the political spectrum recognised that we were all in it together and society had to try and provide decent homes that were affordable for all. All that got ditched by Margaret Thatcher who not only stopped building council homes but sold them off on the cheap without building replacements. After 30 years of relying on the free market to house people and to create a home owning democracy, what have we ended up with?1. A severe shortage of homes to buy that are remotely in the price ranges of young people starting out or the elderly needing specialist facilities and care. House builders have put up 4 and 5 bedroom executive homes across the green belt. Young people have been shut out of the market. There was a stage when 66% of young people could afford to buy their own home. That is now down by more than half to significantly below 33%. Prices are 6 to 10 times the value of local salaries for young people. Uncontrolled and unguided free markets have destroyed the home own democracy.2. A drastic shortage of council homes. Apparently if you don't let councils build for 30 years and keep selling off their stock they run out of properties to let to those in need. Who would have thought it?3. A dependency on a private rented sector where six month tenancies are the norm. We have families being brought up with no certainty that their kids can stay in their school for longer than a few short months and no idea where they'll be able to afford to live if the landlord's agent kicks them out so that they can raise the rents. Not my idea of a secure and stable community.The problems with this approach are now so glaringly obvious that even Theresa May has decided that she is prepared to allow councils to borrow to build. Too little. Too late. Councils are still to be constrained by her insistence they must sell them off after 10 years (thus making any mortgage style loan near impossible to get). Nevertheless, I suppose we must be grateful for small mercies.By comparison when it comes to care there is no mercy at all. Official Conservative policy remains firmly embedded in the idea of individuality. If you get dementia then they clearly think that is your own fault and you must pay. It is not entirely clear how much you will pay as the policy changes by the day. You are probably going to have to spend your entire savings and all the value of any home you own on care until your relatives are left to inherit the last £100,000. So loyal children who spend hours looking after you in your old age but can't cope without extra professional help will lose the vast majority of what you hoped to leave them. Your neighbours may be more fortunate. If their Granny doesn't need looking after and she drops dead of a heart attack then they get to inherit the whole pile.That's how clumsy and crude May's "care" policy is. A sensible approach would be to share the burden and impose the necessary level of progressive taxation on inheritance to deal with care costs in a civilised way and to even out the burden. Instead Conservative policy is firmly rooted in mean spirited individualism of the worst kind. We all know that care bills have to be paid for. But we don't have to run a bad luck lottery which leaves the elderly who lose feeling desperately guilty about the cost every time they need help to get dressed, get cleaned up or get fed.This is bad enough. But there are another set of victims who don't even seem to be appearing on the radar in this election campaign. If you have a disability then any decent society would assess your needs and then try and find a way of delivering a reasonable standard of living supported by the taxes of others. The UK's disability policy has become aggressive not supportive. You get checked by assessors who have been told that they must get as many people as possible off the disability register as soon as possible. People in need are left feeling desperately worried and insecure for weeks before an assessment and then find themselves being told by people who are not doctors and have no real expertise in their condition that they should jolly well stop moaning and get themselves back to work because the taxpayer has lost patience with them.We have inflicted almost ten years of austerity policies like this on the poorest in our societies as a direct result of allowing a very small group of bankers to be free from proper government supervision and management. Reckless selfish gamblers placed bets on the financial markets that were three times the size of the entire world economy and then had to be bailed out by taxpayers when the markets went wrong and our entire economic system teetered on the edge of bankruptcy as a result of their selfishness. The only thing that saved the day was government intervention.Unfortunately the price of that intervention was not the introduction of sensible taxes and controls on huge financial transactions. The price was year after year of real term cuts to public services. School children are now facing cuts of around £400 per head in their education budgets in a desperate attempt to balance government budgets that have been in deficit for every year since the crash. Incredibly the Bank of England has provided over £400,000,000,000 of fresh money to prop up the banks that created the crash and not one single effective policy has been put in place to prevent a repeat. Shed loads of money have been wasted on propping up banks whilst the rest of us have been told we must tighten our belts and be responsible.So we have a choice in a few weeks time. We can opt for individualism or we can accept that we live in a community and communities look out for each other. This is not a plea for some drive to establish a socialist utopia. It is a plea for common sense. Use markets to do what they are good at. Use the government to do what it should do. Because if you don't then it is pretty clear what lies in wait.Hidden behind Theresa May, kept in a cupboard with a damp towel on their heads, there are some very aggressive Tories who make her look mild and reasonable. If she wins then the day after the election they will not slink away saying she now has a mandate to be kind and gentle. They will come after her with extreme determination to get rid of every half way reasonable policy she has floated and replace it with a drive to dump the last remnants of a functioning welfare state.And the place they will most wish to start? The idea that we can provide health care for everyone based on need. Don't expect them to abolish the NHS. Just expect them to make it such a bad service that only the very poorest wish to rely on it. The better off in society will have to shell out for private health insurance and spend their days worrying about what happens if they get a long term illness and have to throw themselves on the mercies of the last remains of a desperately stretched service deemed good enough for the poor and feckless masses. The poor can go hang.We need to tell these people at the ballot box one very simple message. There is such a thing as a society. And we want to live in a decent one.

I got asked five fantastic questions by 38 Degrees that they are asking all candidates in Skipton and Ripon to answer. I'm sharing below my responses. The answers are in bold text.

1. Mrs May said, on accepting the leadership of the Conservative party, that addressing inequalities would be her top priority. What concrete proposals does your party have for reducing inequalities both within the UK and in the rest of the world?I will answer for myself throughout and not hide behind party policy. I have to be honest that we cannot have good public services and a caring society without paying for those services. I favour paying once properly through proportional taxation and proportional inheritance taxes instead of paying low headline rates of taxation and then finding people are exposed to extra costs and all the insecurities that go with them. For example I think it is far better that we all pay a little extra tax and that we provide proper care for the elderly than that we leave the individuals who happen to have expensive care needs in old age to worry about exactly how much they will have to pay and whether the value of their home will have to be used to pay for it. 2. Following the London and Manchester tragedies, what steps does your party propose to combat the threat of Islamic fundamentalism without compromising community relations within the UK and good relations with the Islamic world more generally? How far do you see the Israeli government’s support for illegal settlements in the West Bank as a threat to our good relations with Arab states and what can/should the UK do about it?The blame for terrorism lies with the people who carry out the act, those who help them to do so and anyone who remains silent when they hold information about a potential target. The blame for fostering terrorism can most directly be traced to Saudi Arabia which has funded the spread of Islamic ideology and made us all more vulnerable. I cannot be proud of my country when I see us supplying arms to a regime which was the home of the vast majority of the 9/11 bombers and where women are treated as if they are incompetent by birth. Nor am I proud when that regime imposes terrifying bombing raids on Yemen using British weapons. My concerns over Israel are simpler. I am a supporter of the existence of the state of Israel as a society where people are free to earn their living and exercise their full human rights. I happen to believe exactly the same thing about Palestine. I am not convinced that the UK foreign policy has been driven by my equal respect of these rights for all and certainly not convinced that is in the best interests of the UK.I opposed the Iraq war at the time - as to their eternal credit did the Green Party and the Lib Dems. We all took a lot of criticism at the time from the two main parties who voted for the war. Looking back now does anyone seriously think that their judgement about how to make this country safe was better than ours?.I am no pacifist and fully recognise the need for well organised and funded police and security services. I find it hard to see how sacking police officers achieves that. Nor do I think that making troops who came back from Iraq redundant in order to pay for Trident missiles which are utterly useless in messy localised modern conflicts makes for a sensible strategy for dealing with terrorism.3. What are your party's policies on immigration, distinguishing if appropriate between economic immigration and resettlement of refugees and their families? What steps might be needed to mitigate the potential impact on sectors of the UK economy which have traditionally depended to significant extent on non-UK workers? Is the UK doing enough to meet the challenge of the refugee crisis?In an unequal world I fully understand why there have to be sensible planned controls over immigration. I don't for one minute accept that immigrants are the cause of our problems. We don't have a housing crisis because of immigration. We have a housing crisis because we haven't built enough council homes for 30 years, we have allowed developers to build 4 and 5 bedroom executive homes across green fields instead of 1 and 2 bed starter properties, and we haven't regulated tenancies intelligently. The result is young people trying to bring up families in rented accommodation on six month tenancies with no realistic prospect of ever joining a home owner democracy without family helpThe one country that has had no immigration of significance since the Second World War is Japan. The average age there is 47 and they are desperately worried about who will look after the elderly. We cannot afford to lose the brilliant doctors who work in the NHS. One of my friends was an NHS doctor in Keighley for over 20 years working flat out with dedication in challenging circumstances. She now has no guarantee of being allowed to remain in the UK because she kept her Dutch passport. Is that the best we can do as a society?Compare the utter generosity of spirit in Germany where one million refugees were taken with the very welcome but tiny contribution of the UK. They have done 50 times as much as us and we have allowed ourselves to opt for Cameron's policy of paying others to keep refugees out of Britain. Many of these people, like the Ugandan Asians, have skills and energies that would have been an asset to this country. I do not claim to be as generous in the policies I would adopt as the Conservative German Chancellor but I think we might manage to do rather better than the far right British Prime Minister.Finally a simple point. Every student who comes to study in the UK brings in more foreign currency than selling a luxury car abroad. May's policies aren't just mean spirited. They are bad economics.4. What are your party’s policies on public health and health services? How would you ensure a balance, and effective co-ordination, between the different components of the system (health education, preventative measures, primary care, acute services, services for people with long-term conditions including mental health)? Do you accept the principle that access to (expensive) treatments should depend on clinical need and ability to benefit, not on ability to pay?As someone who has successfully run large public sector organisation employing 400 people I am the first to accept that careful financial management is an essential part of providing an effective service. We cannot pay for everything in every circumstance. I therefore have a great deal of respect for the work of those in the NHS who try to determine which treatments currently represent value for money in the face of intense lobbying and mis-information from some drug companies and even some charity campaigners.I want evidence driven objective scientific fact to determine how we use the resources we can make available to the NHS. But I do want those resources to be more than adequate enough to pay for a properly integrated service that recognises care and mental health as being every bit as important as say cancer treatment. I want treatment to be free at the point of use and for the judgement of the doctor to determine what happens to me and my family not the judgement of the accountant or the US hedge fund who runs that part of the service.I don't want to see the NHS reduced to a rump service that only provides the bare minimum for the very poorest whilst the better off are subjected to random and unpredictable charges. There will never be a day when the government announces that it is going to abolish the NHS. Instead we risk voting for them to do it quietly and steadily day by day. I think if this government gets back in then we will see the NHS weakened stage by stage as the easy profitable things are sold off slice by slice to American hedge funds leaving a basic rock bottom available for those without insurance. If we don't want Donald Trump style health care then we have to fight for what we have got, fund it properly and stop constantly re-organising and tinkering with it. 5. How should the UK best reduce its carbon emissions and honour its obligations under the Paris agreement? How would you encourage/incentivise a lower use of energy, including energy for transport, without unduly penalising rural areas? In the context of a low-carbon economy, is there any need for fracking?The first intelligent move any government should make over energy is to subsidise simple measures like insulation so that use is cut. This is the cheapest, most effective and quickest action. It would cut bills for customers, cut emissions and help us to stop sending quite so much money to Saudi Arabia and Russia for oil and gas. Aside from recognising the need for much improved local bus networks, I favour rail transport locally and regionally. I want to see the Skipton to Colne line built before the next election and a robust plan for a station back in Ripon. I want to see a proper northern powerhouse rail service resembling the London tube network and linking the huge employment opportunities up across the north so that our children don't have to head south in order to prosper in their work. At the last election there was much good talk about a Northern Powerhouse. Afterwards it was all forgotten as a pathetic £100m was devoted to progress up north whilst a £15,000m Cross Rail project was completed in London. I have no ideological problem with nuclear power. I just have huge practical objections. Hinkley Point for example is planned to provide 8% of our energy needs sometime in the future. A giant clumsy power plant of almost exactly the same nature as the ones in America which drove Westinghouse to bankruptcy because they couldn't be build on time and on budget. We have committed to borrowing money from China, to pay the French, to provide energy at 3 times the market rate for 20 years via an unproven technology. Not my idea of sensible economics. Especially as we still don't know how to clear up the mess if it all works perfectly and are subjected to horrible risks if it doesn't.I want to see us invest in being at the forefront of the next phase of technology not the back end of fossilised policies. Going for fracking is like investing in a better mechanical calculator when computers have just been invented. Any responsible government would be moving us away from fossil use and plastic use and using our science and technology skills to secure a sustainably prosperous future for us economically and environmentally. Put simply my biggest problem with the government is that they talk about safety and security but they are gambling with the ecology of the whole planet. Not my idea of responsible government.

I don't mind admitting that I have had no enthusiasm for campaigning since events in Manchester. The images were all too real. I have myself been to concerts in Manchester this year and I know so many parents who have enjoyed seeing their children go off to their first event. To see these events in a place which we all felt was safe has been horrible. The images of parents frantically waiting for children and of children desperately searching for parents have had me in tears.The only bright spot in a desperately awful situation has been the amazing efforts of all sections of the local community to help out without thought of themselves. I've also been moved by the remarks of so many of the victims. One of those who was forced to hurry away in fear was a young girl who got home and then saw a horrible message about Muslims online. She immediately pointed out the reality:" It was a Muslim who pulled up in his taxi and drove us home to safety. A very compassionate man who was also terrified yet helped others."That just about says it all. I am not asking any of my Muslim friends to even begin to think about apologising for the behaviour of the killer. They didn't ask me to apologise for the white racist who murdered Jo Cox. The only people who share responsibility for this kind of thing are the people who carry out the act, those who have assisted in its planning and anyone who is cruel enough to cover up any small piece of information that might help identify the victims or prevent a future attack.As for the Sun's front page headline accusing Jeremy Corbyn of backing terrorism that was published the morning after the attack I can only say that it is beneath contempt. No wonder almost no one buys the paper in Liverpool decades after Hillsborough. I can only hope they have finished themselves off in Manchester as well.I can imagine the reaction of the Sun if those of us who opposed the Iraq war or the irresponsible destabilising policies in Libya used the incident in Manchester to start trying the very next morning to associate those who took a different attitude with acts of terrorism that they would never condone. What on earth went through the mind of the Sun's editor that made him think it was an appropriate morning to try making cheap slurs?What is needed now is a refusal to allow either terrorists or bigots to bully us out of following our normal daily activities. If bombers see that they have the chance to disrupt election campaigns and influence the outcome of elections then surely that will only encourage them. It feels exactly like what they would most want. It gives them an influence on events and a success in disrupting and dividing us that none of us wishes to provide.So, with a bad taste in my mouth and little of my normal enthusiasm for free argument and discussion I intend to go back to local campaigning tomorrow. I understand that this is the day when regional campaigns can start and that national campaigns will be properly underway again on Friday.The best advert against aggressive bigots who want to destroy our way of life is to get back to it as quickly as normal. So, in the spirit of tolerant understanding of the views of people from all parties, I can actually understand why Paul Nuttall from UKIP thinks that it is right that he should go back to full national campaigning tomorrow and launch his manifesto. I just wish that manifesto would contain some understanding that the best kind of British nationalism is the kind that is proud of all our communities, happy to defend all our liberties and recognises that our problems don't stem from "them immigrants".Our problems stem from bad policies and intolerant individuals. It will be nice to get back to free debate with people on the streets about which of those policies are flawed and how we build a safer, more tolerant, more stable and more successful country. I will, of course, be putting the case that sustainable Green policies are the answer to that and I look forward to lively argument with interesting people who genuinely value our democratic right to hold different views and discuss them with open minds no matter how much intimidation we encounter.

​Out on the streets yesterday I began to feel a glimmer of hope. Currently the great weight of betting money is going on how big the Conservative majority will be and I continue to fear that the most likely outcome is a significant May win. If that happens it is relatively easy to work out what will happen.* all this stuff about workers rights will be quickly forgotten and shown up for sound bite politics of the worst kind. When you check the manifesto what they are actually committed to doing is to listening to the outcome of a review. I am sure the millions of people in the gig economy will be grateful* we will start to see the reality of the Brexit deal and no matter how much the public hates what it sees the far right of the Conservative Party will drive through the hardest and the most ideologically blinkered form of Brexit. There will be no election and no referendum to give us the chance to vote on the reality. A narrow vote on forgotten promises will be all we get. In case you missed it May allocated £30 million a week to the NHS in her manifesto. I make that £320 million short on the Brexit bus promise.* the neglected regions will also be forgotten with all the speed of the northern powerhouse - remember that?! Token gesture finance will be sent up north and much will be made of getting free of the genuinely clumsy EU bureaucracy. Meanwhile they will continue to send northern taxpayers money to London to spend ten times as much on transport infrastructure there per head.* nothing will be done to control high risk financial gambling in the city that caused the crash* an industrial strategy will be seen through to completion. Unfortunately it will be a fossilised 'strategy' of fracking and road building with a few token gestures towards the huge opportunities that are opening up in modern businessI could go on but that is not what I want to write about. After speaking with people at random on the streets yesterday I'm thinking of going down to the bookies and checking the odds on a different outcome to the one everyone on the telly is predicting.My logic is as follows:1. May has made the mistake of peaking too early and being smug. British people don't like smug2. She has also made the mistake of over confidently telling people in advance some of the things she intends to do that will be deeply unpopular. A number of them are already backfiring badly3. The Liberal Democrat vote looks to be static but it is geographically grouped. They are going to do well in remain areas and win back some seats. Cameron won the last election from the Liberal Democrats with Labour standing still. Voters in quite a number of areas that lost a good Lib Dem candidate may well feel they have been punished enough and vote them back in. Progressives alliance deals will help. I've been pleased to be able to recommend all progressives to vote Lib Dem in Harrogate and they've reciprocated by withdrawing in Skipton and Ripon. Every single new seat the Lib Dems win back means May has to win a seat somewhere else4. Despite all his obvious shortcomings Corbyn is particularly good at two things. Policies that appeal to his core voters and campaigning. I therefore expect him to do a lot better in traditional Labour strongholds than is being predicted. I also expect him to gain from a momentum that can only go forward having started in a bad position. If the opinion polls narrow a little more and the vote is bunched in winnable seats there is no May landslideAll of which leads to the very interesting question of what happens if May only gets a narrow margin of victory on none at all. She has staked the entire election on her personality and leadership. If she doesn't win big a deeply divided party will fall to squabbling about who is to blame. There is one pretty clear target. That creates some very interesting possibilities and puts severe limits on how aggressively she can pursue the far right Brexit dreams if back in office.I leave until after the election any exploration of what might happen on the left if my optimism proves misplaced and she wins big. Too many people have already been far too ill disciplined over that and helped her enormously.What I would like to finish with is a bit of optimism for the Greens. A coherent and united leadership team performing well in interview after interview. Good policies that look forward to an optimistic Britain with sustainable modern industry and commerce. A small group of MPs instead of a single one. Strong votes in seats like my own where I now predict I will come second after seeing the shambolic performances of the Labour candidate at hustings. The Green Party is well set to come out of this election with an enhanced reputation and a much better public understanding of how forward looking our alternative really is.I will be surprised if too many other parties manage that!

You'd think animal welfare would be a non controversial topic in this election. Surely everyone is in favour of it. Well up to a point they are. As soon as you dig deeper you start to discover just how paper thin some of those commitments are.

Take foxhunting for instance. A significant number of MPs, almost all from the Conservative Party think it is just a nice little tradition that enhances animal welfare by removing a pest. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is, I believe, true that foxhunting can be a nice tradition in which people ride out together on an organised trail hunt. It can also be a horrible tradition that means people ride chaotically across other people's land in hot pursuit of a kill that they will smear across children's faces. Hunting foxes this way has nothing to do with helping farmers. It is actually a great nuisance to farmers as it scares livestock and risks damaging fences. Nor does it help in any significant way with pest control. Riders have every right to enjoy a tradition in an organised way that does no harm to others and the current act fully permits them to do it. I am therefore strongly opposed to repealing the current law on foxhunting. Indeed there are aspects of it which could benefit from being strengthened.

Then let's consider the much bigger issue of the welfare of farm animals reared in the UK or imported into the UK. The EU has established reasonably strong animal welfare standards which apply across the whole of Europe. As soon as we leave the EU we lose that protection. It is, of course, possible to come out of the EU and either stick to or indeed strengthen those standards so that we can continue to trade across Europe. It is not possible to strike new free trade with counties like Donald Trump's America and protect animal welfare.

Let me explain what I mean. There are large ranches in parts of America where cattle are kept inside in conditions that resemble battery farms for chickens. The cows never come out of their stall and never see the fresh air. They have to be drenched with antibiotics as a result of the over-crowding. With all the long term health risks for many species including our own that this entails. The result is very cheap meat and milk. Strike a free trade deal with American and we will have to import these products which will undercut UK farmers. They will then have a choice. Go bankrupt or use similar methods. Very few British farmers want to do that because they care about their livestock. We will, however, not be able to protect them because our import rules will be overseen not by the EU (which with all its weaknesses has significant elements of democratic control). The rules will be overseen by a trade commission consisting of lawyers and unelected business representatives. The unelected bodies overseeing new trade deals will be able to over-ride decisions of a British government. So much for all that stuff about getting our sovereignty back.

One final point. A subject that is dear to my heart. I am a beekeeper. Honeybees and bumblebees are both weakened by exposure to neonicitinoids. These are chemicals which are introduced to the seed and then penetrate the entire structure of the growing plant including the pollen. When the plant dies the chemicals don't go away they wash into hedgerows and can achieve greater levels of concentration. Exposure to high levels of neonicitinoids kills insects outright. Exposure to what are called field levels don't. But they have been proved to weaken the navigation systems of bees and that reduces the number making it back to the nest. For this reason the EU has banned neonicitinoids whilst more testing is carried out. The chemical companies have lobbied the UK hard to remove that ban and the UK has voted against that ban frequently. As soon as we are out of the EU I fear that this ban will be lifted. In or out of the EU it would be extraordinarily reckless to do this. We simply do not know the impact of neonicitinoids on every pollinating species but we do know that without insect pollinators we will be in real trouble.

So for me the situation is simple. If you want high standards of animal welfare the most likely way to get them is to stay in the EU or, at the very least, to sign up to a commitment to maintaining EU regulations on animal welfare as a minimum.

The Green Party and the Liberal Democrats are standing in this election on a platform of insisting that we see the real deal on issues like this before we vote again on whether we wish to leave. If you don't want the future of animal welfare to be decided by a Conservative Party that wants a free vote on returning to aggressive foxhunting then you know what to do when it is time to vote. We cannot trust UK animal welfare standards to be determined without any electoral checks and balances in whatever way the far right of the UKIP/Conservative alliance decides.

I thought readers of the blog might like to know how the election campaign has been going. Answer is excellently. At the three hustings so far droves of people have come up to me at the end saying they arrived intending to vote one way and now intend to vote Green. The single best question I have been asked was "What policy of your own party do you disagree with?" Labour candidate waffled. Conservative candidate spoke about how excellent all May's policies were. I said we had to get away from daft idea that everything others say is wrong and everything my party says is right. I gave example of HS2 which I back because I think it is the greenest solution to the need from more track capacity if Yorkshire is to prosper. Green Party official policy is against. I could have given at least another 20 examples of where I disagree with a party that gets the big decisions right - Iraq, EU, anti-austerity - and loads of small little ones wrong. I was also able to say that we had collaborated across party lines with Lib Dems and I thought people of good will from all parties should be thinking of voting Green.Here is the first draft of the text of a further message to voters in Skipton and Ripon that I am now working on to illustrate what I mean:​Few of us like the way modern politicians tend to constantly criticise each other. So it has been a real pleasure to be able to agree across party lines with the local Liberal Democrats on a number of things recently. The Green Party and the Liberal Democrats have two clearly different visions of the future of Britain but we also share many values.For this reason the Green Party has decided to stand aside in Harrogate and Knaresborough in order to offer their support to an excellent Liberal Democrat candidate there. We really hope Helen Flynn wins that seat with the support of progressives from all parties.I was also very pleased that the Liberal Democrats, who had already selected an excellent local candidate for Skipton and Ripon, decided that he would stand down and recommend people in Skipton and Ripon to vote Green.We badly need more cross party collaboration in this country and I would urge people of all political persuasions to think with an open mind about the future of this country before they cast their vote.If you are the type of Conservative that wants a strong and stable business environment and a prosperous economy then I would urge you to vote for me. It is vitally important for the future of this country that we keep access to the Single European market. Are you really sure that is what the ideologically obsessed far right will work for if that wing of the party sees a huge majority?If you are the kind of UKIP supporter that was worried about the neglect of the regions and of communities within them and wanted to see more resources going to the NHS then I would urge you to vote for me. In or out of the EU I will fight fiercely for a proper regional policy in this country and for investment in the industries of the future. I am also a passionate campaigner for improved care services, better resources for the NHS and an end to constant bureaucratic re-organisations of the services our community needs.If you are a Labour voter who admires the values of the party and many of its policies but is concerned about the quality of the opposition it has provided to the government then I would urge you to vote for the candidate with the best chance of uniting the votes of all local people of good will behind change. I can do that.If you are a Liberal Democrat who values liberty every bit as much as you do fairness and community then we are natural allies.And of course if you are concerned about the risks we are taking with the environment both internationally and locally and want to see this country at the forefront of the new business opportunities that are opening up as the world moves away from fossilised technologies then that is my passion.In this election in Skipton and Ripon please don't think about party labels or about past loyalties. Please weigh up the arguments with a fresh mind. A large vote for the Greens in this constituency will get noticed nationally in a way a vote for any other party might not. If you are interested in building the prosperity of this country around investing in science, technology and modern low energy businesses then please send a message that you want positive change and join with those from all parties who are deciding this year to:Vote Green.

​Last week my granddaughter broke her arm. She is 4 years old and fell off a trampoline. She went to Accident and Emergency with a sharp broken bone pressing against the inside of her skin.You can imagine what that is like for a 4 year old. You can also imagine what it is like for the mother who was with her. They waited for two hours in A & E before the little girl was treated. You probably can't even begin to imagine what a parent and a child goes through in those circumstances.Last year two and a half million people waited 4 hours in A&E before treatment.I suggest that anyone who thinks the Conservatives offer a safe pair of hands thinks long and hard about this before they vote.

Yet another local election has taken place in which few people bothered to vote. Low turnouts and local elections have become commonplace. Which is hardly surprising when you think how little real responsibility is left with local councils.Most secondary schools are now academies so local councils don't look after much of our children's education. For decades councils haven't been able to build council homes with any confidence that they won't be forced to sell the home off on the cheap before they have paid back the money they borrowed against it. So they've got fewer and fewer council homes. More recently they have lost most control over planning with a national assumption being brought in that the developer is right and the citizen wrong (dressed up, of course, as a presumption in favour of sustainable development). They have almost no meaningful funding left to do anything to attract industry or commerce to their locality. Just about all they have left is bins, parks and care. The budget for the last of these is so strapped for cash that it is a wonder the service functions at all. Top all that with decades of staff losses and it doesn't make for an inspiring service. Adding elected mayors to the mix simply amounts to yet another top down re-organisation and an extra level of bureaucracy. Not most people's idea of what local government needs.Contrast this with what was achieved by local government in the days when it had real power. Joseph Chamberlin for the Conservatives made a huge contribution to developing Birmingham and introduced the whole idea of simple practical common sense Conservatism. He is one of the main inventors of one nation politics based on the simple principle that most people want their locality to do well. It was an idea that got him elected again and again. Because he was actually able to do something to build up a great city.Labour did much the same thing for many cities in the north with a lot more consideration for the needs of ordinary working people. They had a whole series of excellent dedicated local councillors who devoted their entire lives to this kind of small deeds politics. Actually that is wrong. People like Ada Salter (see the excellent biography by Graham Taylor) didn't do small deeds. They did significant and very important deeds locally. Providing people with better homes, better parks, better health and a better environment isn't a small thing. It is politics at its best. The reason the Labour Party got trusted by so many voters was this army of selfless people doing simple things well on behalf of local people.The number of people from any political party prepared to do that sort of work these days is desperately thin. So is the scope and the authority of local government. Every meaningful decision seems to have been brought under the national government in Westminster or - and let's be honest about this - occasionally the EU. Small reason then that many people used the Brexit vote to express the view that their own particular community had been neglected and forgotten and they felt powerless locally.For the avoidance of doubt this does not mean that I think gambling with our economy or with European political stability is the right way of dealing with this problem. I still think Brexit will prove a serious mistake and we must be given a chance to look hard at the final deal and decide on the basis of reality not promises. I also think massively more of the centralisation blame lies with Westminster than Brussels.But I do think we all need to appreciate the importance of returning power to the local level whenever possible. It is madness that a decision made by a local planning committee can be over ridden by a decision made by a national body that local people have no control over. It is crazy to squander the power of local pride and take decisions and funding for local economic development away from local councils. (Even crazier when the development bodies that you put in place to replace them are constantly re-organised so that almost no one can remember whether it is Yorkshire Forward, the Leeds Local Enterprise Partnership or a mayor who controls the budget and makes the decisions this year).We need our pride back in local communities. Restoring genuine power and control to local authorities should be the first step in that equation.I say that regardless of the result today in the local council seat where I stood. Whatever party is controlling the council people have a right to expect that the local authority is responsible for a wide range of local services and can be kicked out of office when they don't run them very well. Decades of neglect of local government by politicians from all major parties needs to be reversed and reversed quickly.Otherwise we can hardly blame people if they become cynical about politics and think no one that they know personally stands any chance of changing things on the ground.

Late extra: 45% of people voted in my constituency of Aire Valley with Lothersdale and I managed to win a Conservative seat for the Green Party on a night when they lost very very few seats anywhere in the country. Gives me a chance to put some of this theory into a tiny bit of practice!!!